Staunch the Bleeding
by Verity Bracken
Summary: When he survives the snake's bite, he must learn to negotiate a life he never thought he would live long enough to see. But his feelings for the boy haven't changed. My first go with this pairing. Some explicit slash and swearing in some chapters. Reviews give me hope - always...
1. Chapter 1

It was lucky, he supposes afterwards, that the Granger girl had nearly a full bottle of dittany in her bag. That the boy had arrived soon enough to staunch the bleeding. That the snake, although powerful, was not venomous.

He considers his feelings of relief. If pressed, he would always say he was ready to die, that he had been prepared for it all his adult life. An adulthood, spent in service to the Dark Lord. With such a capricious, vengeful master, one must be prepared for death at any moment.

But when the moment comes, and he does not, after all, die, he feels unexpected relief. It steals over him with unaccustomed warmth, despite the chill from blood loss and pain. He lets the boy believe he is dead, however. He must learn what is expected of him to end this, must re-enter the fray.

Hours later, the boy returns to find him, the battle over. Won. He had not forgotten, even if just to retrieve a corpse. He is touched by this, even after years of hardening his heart against others, especially against this boy.

'Professor?' the boy whispers in his ear, surprisingly gentle as he checks for signs of life. 'Severus?' A warm hand pressed to his chest to feel for a heartbeat. Fingers on the fluttering pulse at his wrist. An ear brushing his lips as he listens for breath. As he cannot crawl through the tunnel, the boy levitates him, floating him back to the castle and the hospital wing, undamaged compared to the devastation elsewhere.

He is placed in a bed at the end of the ward, screened off from all others. He tells them he wants no visitors. He receives none. Except once, he hears the boy whispering to Poppy, asking about his health, whether he will recover. He feigns sleep. After everything he put the boy through, the performance of his lifetime, he is ashamed to face him now.

He hears Poppy's footsteps move further away. The boy remains by the screens, then moves quietly to him, placing a bandaged hand on his chest again. He hopes the pounding of his heart cannot be felt. Then a soft kiss, at the edge of his mouth. He inhales, catching a little of the boy's breath before he moves away again.

Afterwards he hears that he has left Hogwarts to rebuild his life, to start it without the curse inside him. It doesn't matter. After all that hatred, they are never going to be friends. They may never see each other again. The pain of that thought shocks him. The kiss is eternally confusing.

*** To be continued… ***


	2. Chapter 2

Minerva must have told everyone in the end. About what he had – and hadn't – done. How he had served Hogwarts after all. When he is at last strong enough to leave the hospital wing, his reception is not what he expected. He has no habit of socialising with the other staff beyond meal times in the Great Hall. It is easy for him to go back to keeping to his quarters over the summer, keeping to himself once more. The other teachers, however, do not always allow this.

Pomona drops in every few evenings, often with the excuse of bringing herbs from her greenhouse. 'They'll help rebuild your strength, replenish the blood, Sev,' she says gruffly, eyes shining with affection. She does not stay long, respects his desire for solitude. The herbs, brewed as a tea, are effective indeed.

Horace Slughorn, on the brink of returning to retirement, visits once, bringing a restorative draft he had brewed. He fills him in on the activities of the summer, the rebuilding of the castle in time to receive a new batch of students in September, his plans for a comfortable life outside the castle.

Septima Vector and Aurora Sinistra visit together, inseparable as ever, bringing him books from the library. Rolanda Hooch carries on a one-sided conversation about early plans for the Quidditch world cup to take place the following year. Sibyll comes to tell him of her prophecy that he will lead a long and fulfilling life, marry and father up to eight children. Only after she has gone does he allow himself to laugh.

He conducts himself as if the visits are interruptions, unwelcome. He cannot help himself. They come anyway. After his visitors have gone it feels strangely pleasant, to know that he is thought of, that his existence occurs to someone else, that his recovery is wished for.

The strangest visitor is Rosmerta. She is not someone he has had much to do with, not being one to frequent her pub. But she visits him nonetheless, bringing with her a small black cat. 'She's a stray,' she claims. 'I don't have time to care for it, not with the pub and all. You'd be doing me a kindness to take it off my hands.' He knows a ruse when he hears it. Minerva's doing, most likely. Giving him something to take care for, to distract him from brooding.

He accepts the cat, rejecting with a slight shudder the name Rosmerta suggested – Smoky – instead naming her Raven. It's a name that better suits her quiet dignity as she licks her paws, her sleekness glinting like a liquorice-black wing as she devastates the mouse population in the dungeons.

*** To be continued… ***


	3. Chapter 3

The most welcome visitor is Minerva. They have always respected each other's intelligence, never trespassed on the other's expertise. When she visits him after breakfast each day, before he can get tired or impatient, her presence is inoffensive, even enjoyable. Raven, usually aloof from all but him, weaves her body around Minerva's ankles in sinuous rapture, a strange kinship he supposes.

She – almost hesitantly, gently for Minerva – informs him one day that she has been appointed headmistress. 'Despite your acknowledged service to the school, Severus,' she tells him, 'the reinstated Board of Governors did not feel it is appropriate to allow you to continue as head master.' She is struggling to meet his eyes. 'The connection to the former regime, you know. I'm very sorry.'

He does not want her to feel awkward. It comes as no surprise. It is not even a disappointment. Being headmaster had merely been part of the act, part of his role as the Dark Lord's loyal servant, his presumed reward as a faithful spy. He does not communicate this to Minerva, but offers his congratulations, even mutters something about the school's good fortune to have her at its helm.

Minerva goes on to tell him that she had insisted to the Board that he be permitted to stay at the school, that it would provide a home and protection for him as long as he desired it. 'Might I even hope you can be persuaded to take back your former position as potions master? Once Horace leaves, before the start of term?' she asks him, almost casually.

He accepts. There is no other place for him in this world. The thought of returning to Spinner's End, of having to find a place in the Muggle world, or a world where he might be forced to glimpse the boy getting on with his life without him, fills him with dread.


	4. Chapter 4

*** Bonus chapter today! ***

He does not see the boy. But he hears of him occasionally. How he has entered Auror training, how the Ministry has waived the usual N.E.W.T. requirements. How he has made a home in London, in that house that once belonged to Black, the house where he himself had once intruded, found the letter from Lily and stolen her signature along with a photograph of her, laughing as she always had in life.

Two years pass. A new century begins. The boy must be twenty, a fledgling Auror who makes occasional appearances in the _Daily Prophet_ for tracking down remaining Death Eaters and Snatchers. The photographs in the paper show a boy less slight than before, growing into his frame. He looks handsome, even dashing, carrying himself with confidence. The cloak of adulthood becomes him. His eyes remain the same.

Always an aloof man, students do not throng around him. But neither do they look away, fearing what will happen if they meet his eyes, as they had during that last terrible year with him as headmaster, overseeing a reign of terror – in reality, his attempt to prevent it becoming worse, his promise to Dumbledore.

He guides students through their exams, to pass out of Hogwarts and into the wider world, starting lives, careers. The burden of cruelty has lifted. He no longer needs to play the role the Dark Lord cast him in, enemy of certain students. But, he finds, he has no skills to be affable, to be nice, exactly, that he is still most students' least favourite professor. At least he is not as hated as before.

He can play out the rest of his life here, avoiding unpleasantness, measuring his days like his potions, scanning the newspaper avidly for a glimpse of the boy. The articles about him become less frequent than before. Most of the Dark Lord's followers have been rounded up. He supposes the boy must have a near ordinary life now. Perhaps even a girlfriend, he thinks with distaste. He will not attempt to intrude upon it again.

They meet in his dreams, of course. He cannot help intruding there. His dreams leave him suffocated with longing, tangled in his sheets on hands and knees, sweaty, sticky, ashamed of the desires of his greedy heart.

Then there are the other dreams, the ones where the boy did not find him, where he did not staunch the bleeding. In these, his life spills on the splintered floor of the shack, blood and tears and regret, leaving him a dried-out carapace, a shrivelled corpse no one needs. When he wakes from these dreams he passes the days after in despair. He was saved, the boy saved him, but he cannot imagine what the point was, if he is never to see him.

*** To be continued. ***


	5. Chapter 5

Then one day in November, the boy is there, at Hogwarts. He appears in the Great Hall at dinner after classes have finished for the day.

He greets him along the length of the teachers' table with a slight incline of the head. The boy is seated where they are not able to hear or speak to each other, but he senses him looking down towards him at various times. He has no appetite that night, but drinks to dull the startling visions of his dreams that visit him during the meal, hoping his body will not betray him.

After the meal has finished, he slips away, knowing the boy will be surrounded with friends, who must have more to say to him than an old enemy. He cannot bear to be greeted as an old acquaintance, just one among the doting crowd.

He rounds the corridor towards his quarters, and there he is. The boy. Waiting outside the potions classroom. Already. Then he remembers that map the boy had, giving him knowledge of the school's secret shortcuts and passages, the cloak that allowed him to pass unseen.

He stands frozen. There is nothing he can summon to his mind to say. The things that spring to his mind can never be said.

The boy breaks the silence at first. 'Professor.'

He nods, feebly, it feels. Dignity is not his companion today. 'Mr Potter.'

'Please. Call me Harry. I think we can do that now.'

He hesitates. The name he had only practised inside his head does not come easily to his lips. 'Harry.' He loathes himself for the croak in his voice as he says it. He clears his throat. 'What brings you to Hogwarts?'

The boy ducks his head, a little abashed. 'I was invited to give a Defence class, part of a new scheme of Professor McGonagall's… to bring in people from various careers as guest tutors on occasion. It was today, for me, I mean… to talk about defensive techniques used by Aurors. You know…'

He is aware of Minerva's scheme. He declined to participate, not feeling he needed extra tutors in his classes. She did not insist. He notes that the boy is still perhaps not yet adult enough to refer to the headmistress by her first name.

'Um… I came to find you. May I speak with you?

He hesitates.

The boy holds out his hand. 'Severus… please?'

*** To be continued… ***


	6. Chapter 6

His reflexes muted with wine, he is too taken aback to respond to this echo of that nightmarish occasion, his most terrible act. The boy was there that night. Were the words deliberate?

He ushers the boy to his classroom in silence, through the back to his own sitting room, closing the door behind him. The boy perches at the edge of the of the chaise longue with its cover of sea-green strangely offsetting the colour of his eyes, her eyes, his knees jiggling with self-consciousness.

He sits and points his wand to the grate, murmuring incendio, and a fire springs up, burning warm immediately. Raven leaps to the curled ciselé arm of his chair. She sits by his shoulder like a consort, a midnight cat at his side, staring unblinking at the boy.

He manages to compose himself to sit without movement, to perform as if he is in control of this situation, waiting for the boy to be first to speak, to get whatever it is off his mind. He feels exposed, a Saint Sebastian bound to a tree, arrows piercing his side, a martyr offering his still-beating heart in an outstretched hand, chest cavity open and bleeding and flayed.

The boy looks up at him, apparently perceiving none of this. 'Could we have a drink, do you think? I have to admit, I feel pretty awkward here, so maybe a drink would help.' He holds out the fingers of one hand, low to the ground, to entice Raven to come over to see him. She ignores the gesture, but he can tell by the flick of her tail that she has noticed.

He bends his head slightly, directs his wand towards a table on which sits a decanter and goblets of cut glass, which fill with wine before he floats them over.

The boy takes a long sip, then another. After a deep breath, he begins. 'Um, this just feels… I mean… I think it's long enough. We should talk. About everything. About what you did for me.'

'I saved your life, you saved mine. Is there more to discuss?' he says, slightly adjusting the buttons at his cuffs. If he can maintain a disdainful tone, he may not betray the exquisite torture he feels.

Harry frowns. 'Yes, yes, I think there is.'

'Where to begin?' he asks, remembering to keep his voice silky, not to betray a tremor.

*** To be continued… ***


	7. Chapter 7

The boy exhales. 'My mother perhaps. How you were in love with her. How it made you protect me, save me. More than once. I never knew at the time.'

He is taken aback. How can the boy not have understood? After all the memories he had given him to watch in the Pensieve, and he still doesn't understand. No one ever did. Scorn seeps into his voice as he answers. 'In love? In love? Harry, you misunderstand.'

'How Professor?' The boy has forgotten they are meant to be on first-name terms. Adults together.

'I loved your mother entirely.' He cannot say the name out loud. 'She was my greatest friend, the other half of me. If we could have lived in the same skin and coexisted that way, I would have. But no. It was nothing as banal as being 'in love' with her. What would we have done? Married? Had babies? No. We were meant to be brother and sister together. Twin souls, perhaps, to employ a tired cliché. Children from the Muggle world making marvels together, weaving the universe with our combined magic.' He clears his throat. 'Life intruded. It did not eventuate. We made choices that kept us apart. Mine were disastrous, as you know. I will pay for them for the rest of my life…'

The boy's eyes – those green eyes that are almost painful to look in to – have filled with tears. He pities him. He had barely a year with Lily, never really knew the marvellous girl, the sublime woman she became.

'I'm so sorry,' he mutters. 'I thought… the doe…'

'Yes, my patronus was a doe,' he says. Impatient now. 'The same as hers. I'd have thought that suggested kinship, affinity, not a love affair. Unlike your father, the stag, the mate of the doe. Apparently.' He tries hard not to snarl as he mentions James Potter.

'Mine's a stag,' the boy offers.

'I am aware.'

'The mate of the doe…' the boy whispers to himself.

He does not answer. He has said so much. This comment is… unexpected. Disarming.

*** To be continued… ***


	8. Chapter 8

This line of conversation seemingly exhausted, the boy takes another deep gulp of his wine, finishing his glass, collecting himself, looking around the room for the first time.

He sees him taking in the walls of bookshelves, the delicate ornaments and polished instruments nestled amongst them. The paintings on the walls, the vase of purple hellebores on his desk, small tables on elegant tapering legs, more books and items for potions piled on the floor. His well-upholstered armchair, the chaise the boy sits on. The boy has not been here before. Perhaps it never occurred to him that his potions master could have a private life.

Visitors are surprised when they see it, the few who enter, expecting his quarters to be austere, like his outward appearance, certainly not this refined clutter. They look at him, perhaps as if he is a jaded aesthete like des Esseintes, in that Muggle novel he once read. Perhaps it is true, both withdrawing from the world to gloat over their possessions.

In more self-indulgent moments, however, he thinks his room is like being inside a Fabergé egg, or perhaps like the inside of his own mind, glittering with well-chosen things, a little exquisite chaos, a little decadence few are aware of.

And, for just a moment, as he watches the boy, he recalls the echo of Lily exclaiming 'divine decadence, darling,' after they snuck into that film underage during the holidays, having recently learnt to transfigure their appearances. She had some of Sally's exuberance, but he realises he could never have cast himself as her leading man – more the grotesque master of ceremonies watching, collaborating, as their world fell apart.

He flicks his wand, and the decanter floats to refill Harry's glass. Keeping him drinking, ensuring his thoughts become a little muddled, blunted, his questions not able to pierce too deeply.

Silence. Perhaps the boy thinks he has said too much. Perhaps he is ashamed of his tears.

He waits. The things he wants to say to this boy are impossible, must remain unspoken. Better to watch. Wait.

*** To be continued… ***


	9. Chapter 9

At last the boy looks at him again. 'So… I'm, ah, I want to clear the air. Tell you I understand about how you… how you had to behave. Even if you really did hate me. That I don't hold a grudge.'

'You are gracious. However… I never hated you. I…' He pauses. Sips. 'At times, I suspect, I took it too far. I could not risk the Dark Lord seeing into my soul. Perhaps I should explain that to Mr Longbottom, if I ever have the opportunity. I believe he suffered from my performance.'

The boy shakes his head, takes another gulp of wine, empties the glass again. He must have had several glasses at dinner. His speech is a little slurred. 'Neville's pretty tough, though he doesn't always seem like it. I think he gets it. Now.'

He inclines his head again to acknowledge the generosity of his words. Neville is, in some ways, his greater regret of the two. Harry was always resilient, Neville more vulnerable.

'It just seems stupid,' the boy blurts out. 'Not talking. For years. We should… we should talk. If you want.'

He sighs. 'I do not always possess the strength, the internal strength, that is, to discuss Lily, to go over the past, if that is what you wish to do.'

'S'not that.'

'What then?' He regrets his sharp tone immediately.

'I just want… sometimes, to talk to someone. Someone apart. You.' The boy is becoming lachrymose again, tears slipping down his cheeks. 'I've thought about you...'

*** To be continued… ***


	10. Chapter 10

He starts, just slightly, but the boy doesn't notice. He takes another discreet sip of his wine, to give him strength for what the boy will say next.

'I saw Draco a month ago,' the boy says, as if at random. 'In London, just in the street one night.'

'Mr Malfoy? I hope you were at least civil to each other. It would be unfortunate to think the old divisions were continuing after everything we've all been through.'

The boy swats the air impatiently, swipes at the tears on his face with the back of his hand. 'I pushed him up against a wall and kissed him.' He blushes immediately. 'I was drunk. I hit his head on the wall a bit.'

And then he understands. The boy does not wish to talk to him. He just wants a confessor. If they were Muggles he would have sought out a priest. He could be anyone, removed, at a distance. He doesn't want this.

'Mr Potter, I am surely not the person you should be speaking to about…'

'He liked it,' the boy interrupts, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, peering at him through the tears to see his reaction. 'Draco. He wanted it, kissed me back. Kissed me hard. But then he ran away, the fucking coward. Worried about his new girlfriend, I s'pose.'

He says nothing. His heart is beating alarmingly fast. This conversation has gone so far from where he was expecting it to go, he has no idea how to navigate it back to sanity, to some semblance of old acquaintances catching up on news.

The boy gestures wildly again, the last drops of wine flying out of the glass. 'Don't you care? Don't you mind?' he asks, urgently. 'It's not Draco I want.'

Then a crack. Raven startles, leaps down from her place on the arm of his chair and out of the room, flowing like oil through the small, low door he had conjured for her. The boy, clutching his glass too tight, has broken it in his hand. Blood flowers out from a cut on his thumb.

Before he even realises he has moved he is in front of the boy, leaning over him. Mutters reparo, and sees with a nauseous lurch to the stomach a piece of glass fly out from where it is deeply embedded in the boy's skin to join the rest as it repairs. The broken glass mended, he takes the boy's thumb in his mouth and sucks the beads of blood, not thinking what he is doing. Staunches the bleeding with a whispered spell.

*** To be continued… Thanks for reading so far. Please review and let me know how you think this is going. ***


	11. Chapter 11

And then it's all so simple. It has happened so many times in dreams, he knows exactly what to do next. And no one stops him. Not the boy, not waking.

He takes the glass from his hand in silence and sets it on a narrow table next to the chaise. Presses him back at the shoulders and kisses him, not caring if he forces the boy to taste his own blood on his lips. Takes off his glasses and drops them beside the glass. Half expects the boy to push him away, kisses him harder when he doesn't. Leans in with a knee in the boy's groin, feeling him harden there, moving against the friction of his knee.

And then he's pushing him down on the length of the chaise, on top of the boy, knee intruding between his legs, holding down one of his hands above his head at the wrist. He's testing him, seeing how far he can command the situation until the boy pushes back. Again, he does not push back. It is all very satisfactory.

He uses his free hand to open the clasp at the boy's neck, letting the robes fall open to expose the veins running down his throat, licking his collar bones and the small hollow between them. Unbuttons the dark shirt below, button by button. The boy lets this all happen, lips parted, watching keenly to see what will happen next, helping to shrug off the shirt sleeves as he is undressed.

He takes a moment to survey the boy, relishing the sight of him lying back half naked, appreciating the tautness that Auror training must have given him. The boy has several scars, from the one he is famous for, to others he never knew he possessed – battle scars, he supposes. There is a round mark, the size of a coin, above his heart, the skin lighter there, the scar tissue shiny and smooth. Long white lines on his arms that can only have been made by knives. The pale writing on his hand that bitch gave him. Many more than the two perfect circles on his own neck he keeps covered with a high collar. The boy's chest is not quite hairless, a small patch of down touches upon it, unlike his own smooth, blanched chest.

He dips his head to give a small bite to the nipple, bringing a moan from the boy.

Only when he runs a hand down to the groin does the boy speak. 'Ah, Professor, please. I've never… not with, you know…'

He pauses. 'Do you want me to stop?' He does not correct the boy. He gains peculiar enjoyment from being called Professor in this moment.

'No…'

'Do you want me to continue?

The boy bites his lip.

*** To be continued… Thanks for reading so far. Please review and let me know how you think this is going. ***


	12. Chapter 12

*** Just a mini chapter today… ***

'Yes… But I don't know…' The boy trails off. 'Have you done this before? With a man?'

He is unused to such direct questions. But he finds the truth comes easily, as he trails an idle finger down the narrow line of hair disappearing into the boy's trousers, sees the boy's hips twitch in response. 'The Dark Lord hardly cared what alliances his followers made, who they… fucked… as long as they ultimately served him without question. There were opportunities among certain Death Eaters. Even Lucius.'

The boy is shocked. 'Draco's father?'

'You should have seen him in the Slytherin dormitory.' The boy gasps a little in delighted shock, then gasps harder as he undoes the buttons at the waist and plunges a hand beneath fabric to feel the hard smoothness below. The boy groans in pleasure, just for a tantalising moment before he is released.

'Please,' the boy moans.

'You. Will. Wait,' he orders. 'Take off your trousers.' The boy scrambles out of them, a little ungainly, then pushes off his underwear.

He places a hand in the centre of the boy's chest and shoves him back on the chaise, more clumsily than he would have liked, due to the wine he has drunk. It gives him rare pleasure to see him sprawled there, naked, obedient, while he himself is clothed.

*** To be continued… Thanks for reading so far. Please review and let me know how you think this is going. ***


	13. Chapter 13

*** Second-to-last chapter! ***

Afterwards, he curses himself for drinking so much. Only moments come into focus when he thinks back on that first night.

Kissing him again, running his nose over the boy's cheek and jaw, drifting his thumb over a nipple.

Pushing Harry's legs back, murmuring Lubricio, feeling the boy suddenly slick around his fingers, bending his head to taste him there.

The boy arching his back in pleasure, burying his face in the velvet of the chaise. 'It's torture,' he laughs. Whispering in his ear. 'Is that what you want?'

Standing and slowly unbuttoning his robes, half cursing the time it takes to undo all those blasted buttons with wine-numbed fingers, half enjoying the effect it has. The boy watching him undress through heavy eyelids, his breathing a little jagged.

Swatting away the boy's hand as it strays towards his groin. 'Don't touch yourself. Not unless I tell you to.' Running a finger up along the vein. The pleasure of seeing this wayward creature submit to his orders.

Crouching over him, his hair falling in a curtain to frame their faces, black hair meeting black hair, holding down the boy's hands tightly over his head, tugging lightly at his earlobe with his teeth.

The boy moving his hips up to meet him.

*** To be continued… Thanks for reading so far. Please review and let me know how you think this is going. Final chapter coming up… ***


	14. Chapter 14

He wakes to find himself in his own bed, feels the silk of the green quilt over him. A moment of panic when he thinks the boy will have gone, but he is there, sleeping. He's on his back, a hand thrown above his head on the pillow, quilt pushed down to the waist. He sleeps like a child. He sleeps like a man who has just been fucked. He can't even begin to untangle whether this is wrong or right.

He curls around the boy, in a clumsy imitation of that picture of the naked Muggle singer that Lily liked, wrapped around his wife. He hopes the boy will not creep out as he sleeps, pretending this had not happened.

When he wakes again, lying on his back, he can tell it is morning without opening his eyes. Light streams in from the small windows near the ceiling of his room. He keeps no curtains on them – it would be hard otherwise to distinguish day from night in the dungeons.

A blurred face comes clearer, and the boy is beside him, now curled on his side. Smiling. Tentative. Shy.

'You're quite bossy,' he whispers, smirking a little. 'I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Given what you're like as a teacher.' Harry ducks his head to nuzzle his ear, the eye contact too much after what has passed between them.

'I thought for a moment you might hurt me,' the boy whispers, the sound making his ear lobe vibrate slightly. 'Not just the… you know. I thought you might be in to other stuff…' He looks ashamed of his perceived limitations, the harm he has experienced.

'Do you really think I would be that obvious?' he asks, softly.

The boy doesn't answer immediately, but draws on his hairless chest, trailing complex, runic symbols with his fingers. He is reminded of the time he came upon him in the bathroom, horrified by what he had done, the curse stolen from his own book. The healing spells he had to draw on Draco's chest to staunch the bleeding.

'Nothing about you is obvious, Severus,' he says at last. 'Professor.'

*** Thanks to everyone who read this far and for the kind reviews. Please review and let me know what you thought of this. Klaus Wanderer draws lovely pictures of Snape like I always imagined him and his beautiful interior drawings also provided inspiration for Snape's room – have a look at his tumblr. ***


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